Previews

Dragon Age: Origins Hands-on Preview

A show of choice -- and wonky controls -- as we try out the Xbox 360 version of BioWare's next big thing.

Spiffy:

Promising depth of story; looks like yet another classic BioWare game through and through.

Iffy:

The Xbox 360 version's facing an uphill battle in terms of decent controls.

BioWare loves to play the "freedom of choice" card. Back when the superstar development studio (which has since been acquired by EA) trotted out Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in 2003, the whole good/evil choice mechanism was a fairly interesting story hook. These days, it's a little... well, played out. When I first started hearing about BioWare's upcoming fantasy-RPG Dragon Age: Origins, I figured it'd hew to the same-old-same-old morality system that's more or less persisted all the way up through Mass Effect. I was right and wrong.

Studio co-founder and General Manager Ray Muzyka recently turned up to show off the game's wide range of choices and subsequent consequences, using two similar yet different groups to illustrate just how intricate the game gets. Group A -- consisting of a noble fighter and his sultry (and sassy) female mage companion -- played its adventure out in tandem with group B, which was headlined by a powerful mage with a big bad warrior sidekick. The mission: Gain entry to the nearby mage tower and help deal with a little demon infestation situation.

Group A used the aforementioned magic-using lady to its advantage, sweet-talking a weak-kneed night watchman into granting passage to the tower. After getting acquainted with the mage tower's captain, the group headed out to offer help to Wynne, the resident magic-field maintainer, protector of children, and master healer. Unfortunately, the mouthy mage wound up picking a fight, ultimately ending in Wynne's untimely death (as well as a cute little eulogy cut-scene). Ah well -- just another corpse to loot, right?

Not according to group B, whose big bruiser managed to bribe the tower guard with delicious cookies (and here I thought the poor guy was gonna get clobbered). After a tense conversation with the tower captain (whose past history with the party's magic-using leader was clearly not an amiable one), Wynne -- an old friend of the party's mage -- happily signed on with the ragtag band, adding powerful magic skills and healing powers to the team dynamic. No awesome loot here... instead, group B gained a friend for life.

Those are some of the choices for two of Dragon Age's six "origin stories," which comprise the first two to three hours of gameplay for new characters, and set up character relationships and backstory in preparation for the main game (which itself is expected to last 60 hours on average). Sure, the canned demo may make the game out to look better than it is, but even this basic string of encounters is more varied than BioWare's trademark black-and-white alignment structure.

Following this brief show and tell Muzyka broke out the Xbox 360 version of Dragon Age and gave me a chance to take it for a very brief spin. Now, I'll be honest -- Dragon Age, to my mind, is fundamentally built for a PC. That's what best suits this kind of game, and that's the version I'll almost certainly play once the game finally launches. That said, the 360 version presents some interesting challenges, mostly thanks to the control pad's less-precise nature, a lack of quick-targeting options, and a comparatively clunky ability hotbar.

In the ogre battle I played, my mage character -- flanked by a trio of generic soldier-types -- brandished a bevy of ice-themed damage spells, as well as a crucial single-target healing ability. During the fast and frantic melee, I fumbled with the targeting controls, cycling through my group mates before finally settling on the no-good ogre, blasting him with my best spells, and quickly discovered that friendly units caught in my radius attacks got a case of the chills alongside my intended target (oops).

As the battle raged, I found myself frantically trying to heal wounded soldiers, again cycling through targets in time to toss some poor sod a few more hit points. I found myself wishing for a "select most damaged party members" button, as well as a "nearest hostile target" option -- second-nature conveniences on a PC, but a lot to ask for on a console's limited control scheme. Muzyka assured me that controls were being fine-tuned for each version, so who knows -- maybe BioWare will surprise me. Hey, it wouldn't be the first time.